thoughts attended him even in the thickest press of business; and whenever a lull came in it, whenever for a while he was not wanted, or work was for some reason slack, he turned with all his powers to his great designs for changing the face of the world for man. This must never be forgotten. The strange thing is that it is perfectly possible, in writing his history and the history of the times, to cut off the public man completely from the great thinker and planner for human welfare. What he did in public seems, in its outward aspect, to have no relation to what he was meditating in private. A history of Bacon the politician might be apparently complete, without a hint dropped that the same man was all the time revolving the Instauratio and the Novum Organum. But the one was for the other. Mr. Spedding reminds us continually, and very justly, that what animated Bacon, and doubtless often upheld him, amid the labours and disgusts of his legal and political career, was the conviction that only by following it patiently to the end, and accepting all its necessities, could he seize the magnificent but fleeting chance which was passing before him the chance proffered, as it seemed, to him alone of being the Columbus of a new world, unsuspected, unimaginable, waiting in nature for the intellect and powers of man. phy and intellectual progress into a popular form and inviting the co-operation of mankind. His old idea of finding a better method of studying the laws of nature, having no doubt undergone in the endeavour to realize it many modifications, had at last taken the shape of a called Experientia Literata, and was to contain treatise in two parts. The first part was to be an exposition of the art of experimenting; that is, of proceeding in scientific order from one experiment to another, making the answer to one question suggest the question to be asked next. The second part was to be called Interpretatio Nature, and was to explain the method of arriving by degrees at axioms or general principles in nature; thence by the light of those axioms proceeding to new experiments; and so finally to the discovery of all the secrets of nature's operation, which would include the command over her forces. . . . As an exposition of the design it was superseded by completer prefaces of later date, and was therefore not infor translation. But as bearing on the history cluded among the philosophical works selected of his own career it has a peculiar value, revealing as it does an authentic glimpse of that large portion of his life which, though to him as real as the rest, and far more profoundly interesting, scarcely shows itself among these records of his career as a man of business, and is in danger of being forgotten. And I do not know how I can better help my readers to conceive the thing, and to give it due prominence among his purposes and performances, than by inserting a translaWhat we have tion of it in this place. to understand and remember is the nature of the During all the time comprised in these volumes, Bacon would be found making a figure in any history of England. But enterprise, and the fact that he believed it pracduring all this time the portions of his ticable. He believed that he had by accident great philosophical work were maturing, and would in the course of generations make man stumbled on a Thought which duly followed out were being brought in varying shapes before the master of all natural forces. The" Interthe judgment of his friends, and even be-pretation of Nature" was, according to his specfore the public. During this time the Ad-ulation, the "Kingdom of Man." To plant this vancement of Learning was published; the thought in men's minds under such conditions Instauratio was growing, and, as it grew, that it should have the best chance of growing was passing about among those with whom and bearing its proper fruit in due season, was he shared his inmost thoughts - Sir Thomas the great aspiration of his life; and though diBodley, Toby Matthews, Bishop Andrews. verted, interrupted, and baffled by a hundred James's accession had at first thrown Bacon impediments-internal and external- by ininto the shade, and we owe to that unem-firmities of body and of mind, by his own busiployed time a fragment in which Bacon has recorded in the most striking way the ideas and purposes which governed his life. We will make a few extracts from Mr. Spedding's account of it: ness and other people's, by clients, creditors, and sheriffs' officers, by the impracticability (say the wise) of the problem itself, owing to a fundafection (as I think) in his own intellectual ormental misconception of the case, by an imperganization, which placed him at a disadvantage in dealing with many parts of it, he never After this [Bacon's knighthood, July, 1603] doubted that the thing might be done if men I find no more letters for a good while, nor in- would but think so, and that it was his mission deed until the meeting of Parliament on to make them think so, and to point out the way. March 29, 1603-4 (?)—any further news of his And though many and many a day must have proceedings. I imagine, however, that the in-closed without showing any sensible progress in tervening months were among the busiest and most exciting that he ever passed. For this is the time when I suppose him to have conceived the design of throwing his thoughts on philoso the work, I suppose not a single day went down in which he did not remember with a sigh, or a resolution, or a prayer, that the work was still undone. Here are some extracts from the draught | his purpose, in a letter, inviting the sympreface in which he sketched his designs :— pathy and co-operation of Casaubon : Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform. ever. Now among all the benefits which could be conferred upon mankind, I found none so great as the discovery of new arts, endowments, and commodities for the bettering of man's life. It was plain that the good effects wrought by founders of cities, &c., extend but over narrow spaces and last but for a short time; whereas the work of the inventor, though a thing of less pomp and show, is felt everywhere and lasts for But above all, if a man could succeed, not in striking out some particular invention, however useful, but in kindling a light in nature —a light which should in its very rising touch and illuminate all the border regions that confine upon the circle of our present knowledge; and so, spreading further and further, should presently disclose and bring into sight all that is most hidden and secret in the world—that man (I thought) would be the benefactor of the human race, the propagator of man's empire over the universe, the champion of liberty, the conqueror and subduer of necessities. For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth. Nevertheless, because my birth and education had seasoned me in business of State; and because I hoped that, if I rose to any place of honour in the State, I should have a larger command of industry and ability to help me in my work; for these reasons I applied myself to the arts of civil life, and commended my services, so far as in modesty and honesty I might, to the favour of such friends as had any influence. In which also I had another motive; for I felt that those things I have spoken of-be they great or small-reach no further than the condition and culture of this mortal life; and I was not without hopes (the condition of Religion being at that time not very prosperous) that if I came to hold office in the State, I might get something done too for the good of men's souls. When I found, however, that my zeal was mistaken for ambition, and that my life had already reached the turning point, and my breaking health reminded me how ill I could afford to be so slow, and I reflected, moreover, that in leaving undone the good that I could do by myself alone, and applying myself to that which could not be done without the consent and help of others, I was by no means discharging the duty that lay on me, I put all these thoughts aside, and (in pursuance of my old determination) betook myself wholly to this work. — iii. 84. Not quite wholly"; yet with great determination and governing purpose. In a more busy time he yet could thus write of VOL. XII. 489 LIVING AGE. Atque illud etiam de me recte auguraris, me scientias ex latebris in lucem extrahere vehementer cupere. Neque enim multum interest ea per otium scribi quæ per otium legantur, sed plane vitam et res humanas et medias earum turbas per contemplationes sanas et veras instructiores esse volo. Quanta aute in hoc genere aggrediar et quam parvis præsidiis, postmodum fortasse rescisces. Conjunctionem animo rum et studiorum plus facere ad amicitias judico, quam civiles necessitates et occasionum officia. Equidem existimo neminem unquam magis verè potuisse dicere de sese, quam me ipsum, illud quod habet psalmus, multum incola fuit anima mea.-iv. 146. But these volumes show us but little of the inner and meditative life. They scarcely do more than give us occasional glimpses of what was going off, and record the dates when some remarkable result of it came to maturity. What they show us is what Bacon appeared in the eyes of the statesmen and the public men of the time, and of those who watched and judged of these great actors. It showed us the means which he followed in his resolute pursuit of power and rank in the State. These means must be reserved for more careful consideration in another notice. From The Saturday Review. HELPS'S LIFE OF COLUMBUS.* for THERE are few people in the world whom one has less temptation to censure than Mr. Helps, and we certainly have no particular wish to be censorious over this pleasant little volume. But the announcement which appears in its preface tempts us, we own, to a gentle remonstrance. We are told that this Life of Columbus is one of a series of biographies destined to appear under Mr. Helps's superintendence, which are “ the most part taken verbatim from my HisSuch a project carries on the very face of it tory of the Spanish Conquest in America." its own condemnation. If literary form or character is a thing which has any real existence at all, a history is something essentially different from a patchwork of lives and events, any one of which can be detached in perfect completeness by "the skill and research of Mr. H. P. Thomas." No amount of addition and rearrangement will ever turn pages of a good history into pages of a good biography; the better the The Life of Columbus. Chiefly by Arthur Helps. London: Bell & Daldy. 1869. that which he did discover, South America might have been colonized by the Spaniards with all the vigour that belonged to their great efforts at colonization, and, being a continent, might not afterwards have been so easily wrested from their sway by the maritime nations. On the other hand, had some breeze, big with the fate of nations, carried Columbus northward, it would hardly have been left for the English more than a century afterwards to found those colonies which have proved to be the seeds of the greatest nation that the world is likely to behold. A tone of mind such as this, which has its grandeur on the large canvas of a history, is necessarily fatal to the interest of individual biography. Columbus dwindles when his greatness hangs on the unshipping of a rudder or the change of a wind. In history, in fact, the more impossible such a remodelling must be. It is perhaps difficult to rate a book more highly than its author himself rates it, but in this case we are bound to say, in justice to Mr. Helps's work, that it is far too good a history to lend itself efficiently to the scissors with which he proposes to snip this series of biographies out of it. There is, indeed, a peculiar difficulty in the case of the Spanish Conquest. Few histories have less of the biographical or narrative element in them; its aim, which is very inadequately represented by its title, is a purely philosophical aim; and the discovery and conquest of the New World is treated throughout simply as a framework for the study of the origins of modern slavery. A yet greater difficulty in the way of such biographical experiments But there is another characteristic of Mr. as the present is offered by the very temper Helps's mind which tells even more directly of Mr. Helps's mind. To be a good bio- against his biographical attempts. Sympagrapher a man must have the largest and thy is the first requisite of a biographer, boldest faith in the powers of individual and the intellectual temper which exercises man and in his superiority to the influences, so marked an influence over the form of all either moral or physical, around him; in a his works is only feebly sympathetic. word, he must to a certain degree be a hero- this case of Columbus one feels that the worshipper. Now, what is most character- writer is looking at him in a very shrewd istic in Mr. Helps's writings is the curiously and just and even good-humoured way, but vivid way in which he realizes the overpow- that he is holding him at arm's length from ering weight of these very influences, in himself to get this look at him. Mr. Helps which he subordinates men and events to treats his hero with all tenderness and rethe general fortunes of the race and the spect, but with just that sort of tenderness gradual development of human ideas, in and respect with which one would treat a which he sometimes seems tempted to re- delicate marble statuette of him, taking gard individuals as mere puppets moved over him up at one time for a bit of genial narthe stage of his history by the larger natu- rative, and laying him down at another for ral forces which assume such names as a bit of reflection or chat about some side"chance" or 66 providence." Take, for question which he has suggested, but always instance, such a characteristic passage as treating him in a purely objective and exthis from the preface to his present work:-ternal way. Of course there is throughout It has always been a favourite speculation with a real interest in his hero; at certain points historians, and indeed with all thinking men, to of his story he is even a little amused with consider what would have happened from a slight him, or angry at him, or grieved about him; change of circumstances in the course of things but he is never absorbed or enthusiastic or which led to great events. This may be an idle and one with him. It is curious how this way a useless speculation, but it is an inevitable one. of looking at Columbus insensibly communiNever was there such a field for this kind of cates itself to the reader. One is so gratespeculation as in the voyages, especially the first ful for the constant ripple of pleasant sideone, of Columbus. The first point of land which talk which goes on from page to page, for he saw and touched at is as nearly as possible the the quaint suggestive comments, the pregcentral point of what must once have been the nant littie gnomes on men and manners united continent of North and South America. which lie scattered along the story, that the The least change of circumstances might have reader hardly realizes till he closes the book made an immense difference in the result. The how completely its tone has become his going to sleep of the helmsman, the unshipping of the rudder (which did occur in the case of the own, how far his hero has receded out of Pinzon), the smallest mistake in taking an ob- the circle of personal interest, and how servation, might have made, and probably did little a part after all the great discoverer make, considerable change in the event. Dur- has played in his thoughts as he read about ing that memorable first voyage of Columbus, him. Now Columbus is one of a class of the gentlest breeze carried with it the destinies men who require for the understanding of of future empires. Had he made his first dis- them precisely this sympathy which Mr. covery of land at a point much southward of Helps wants. We hardly know a better 66 instance of the biographic results which follow from any attempt to sketch such characters without it than the instance of George Fox. As Lord Macaulay has drawn his portrait it is a simple caricature. But it is a caricature which only leaves its victim more unintelligible than he was before. We quite see why the parish constables should have dieted this noisy brawler in leathern breeches on bread and water; but Lord Macaulay does not help us to see just the one point which we wanted to see- why this noisy ranter became the spiritual regenerator of his time, and how it was that men like Penn and Barclay licked all this portentous nonsense into shape. Michelet's treatment of Joan of Arc, on the other hand, is one of the finest instances which history has ever given us of the force of poetic sympathy in rendering a very peculiar character intelligible. By the sheer insight which faith in a great nature alone can give, the historian shows the oneness of that life of a peasant girl as it grew through vision and effort, through its strange alternations of poetry and prose, into the life of a great national deliverer. And Columbus, though his character stands on a far lower level, was an enthusiast of the same stamp with Joan of Arc. It is easy, either in Lord Macaulay's epigrammatic fashion or in Mr. Helps's cooler contemplative way, to paint him as a mere bundle of anomalies and contradictions, a strange amalgam of greatness and meanness, at once dreamer and shrewd man of business, an ardent crusader crossed with the modern man of science, credulous and sceptical, a saint, over whose canonization the Church is said now to be meditating, forcing cargoes of human flesh and blood on a struggling Isabella. Mr. Helps has certainly not the mere vulgar delight in building up a great character by a series of antitheses which "smart" writers seem to find in that process, but his humour has a way of thinking second thoughts which produces much the same effect. The life of Columbus, for instance, culminates in the great moment of his discovery and in a petty act of dishonesty: and who are not usually much loved by them. Sanchez did not see the light at first, because, as Columbus says, he did not stand in the place where it could be seen; but at last even he sees it, and it may now be considered to have been It appeared like a candle that seen officially. doubt it was a true light, and that it was on went up and down, and Don Christopher did not land; and so it proved, as it came from people Their highnesses had promised a pension of ten passing with lights from one cottage to another." thousand maravedis to the fortunate man who should see land first. The Pinta was the foremost vessel; and it was from her deck at two o'clock in the morning that land was first seen by Rodrigo de Triana. We cannot but be sorry for this poor common sailor, who got no reward, and of whom they tell a story that, in sadness and despite, he passed into Africa, after his return to Spain, and became a Mahommedan. The pension was adjudged to the Admiral; it was charged somewhat ominously on the shambles of Seville, and was paid him to the day of his death. It is odd to see how in a passage of this. sort it is not the great discoverer but the cheated sailor who enlists our sympathy, and how all the poetry of the "true light ceases when the sight of it is associated with that charge on the shambles of Seville. In this way, too, all sublimity fades away from the one event of the life which Mr. Helps is sketching; for Columbus is an instance of the strange law which seems to sum up some men's greatness in a single event, to lift them up in the light of it for a moment, and then to let them fall back again into their former littleness. His life began when the Pinta sailed past the Bar of Saltes; its greatness ends when Rodrigo cries "land" from the Pinta's deck. It is curious to remark how the sympathy which Mr. Helps denies to Columbus is to a certain extent elicited by the two figures which he has placed beside him on the canvas, Isabella and Henry of Portugal. To the patient student of modern science the voyage of Columbus is a mere lucky hazard, whose justification is simply to be found in its success. But the prince who, from his promontory of Sagres, directs for half a century the maritime advance of Portugal along the African coast, grounding himself at every step on mathematical and geographical reasons, feeling his way in a sort of inductive fashion from cape to The sun went down upon the same weary round of waters which for so long a time their eyes had ached to see beyond, when at ten o'clock Columbus, standing on the poop of his vessel, saw a light, and called to him privately Pedro Cape and headland to headland for 6,000 Gutierrez, a groom of the king's chamber, who niles, and dying only six years before his saw it also. Then they called Rodrigo Sanchez, labours were crowned by the discovery of who had been sent their highnesses as over the Cape of Good Hope, is far more to the looker. I imagine him to have been a cold and taste of to-day. Isabella, too, profits by cautious man, of the kind that are sent by jeal- the same nineteenth-century wave of feelous States to accompany and curb great generals, ing. The joy and excitement of the dis covery of a larger world, so predominant | Henry V., and yet Agincourt is nothing to till a hundred years ago, has, now that the the moral revolution which was wrought by career of discovery is at an end and the the first cargo of Moorish slaves in 1441. world is known, faded pretty much away. The voyage of Sebastian Cabot is glanced The moral interest, the importance to the at in a line, when the imposture of a Perkin world and its destinies, on the other hand, Warbeck covers page upon page; or, to is nowadays appreciated more and more; take perhaps the strongest instance we reand Mr. Helps is only reflecting the sen- member, M. Guizot devotes a chapter to timent of his day when he tells coldly the three first Parliaments of King Charles, the tale of American discovery, and grows and not a word to the great emigration of warm over the protests and efforts of Isa- the eleven years of his tyranny which carbella against the system of " repartemen- ried 20,000 Puritans to New England, and, tos" and slavery. A thought which abides in founding its greatness, changed the forwith one in reading books like these is that tunes of mankind. A day may perhaps of the strange delusion which still prevails come when Parliaments and drums and as to what is the true history of the world. trumpets will be rated by the historian at In common historic writing, a figure like their true level, but till that day comes we that of Prince Henry is hardly seen in the cannot wonder at what is sometimes called blaze of such a person as our contemporary our English indifference to history." 66 From The Church of England Magazine. They are not lost; they are within the door That shuts out loss and every hurtful thing— And God himself their Lord, and Judge, and And this we call a loss! O selfish sorrow Of selfish hearts! O we of little faith! Aye, look upon this dreary, desert path, The thorns and thistles wheresoe'er we turn; What trials and what tears, what wrongs and wrath, What struggles and what strife the journey hath! mourn. Ask the poor sailor, when the wreck is done, While with the raging waves he battled on, A poor wayfarer, leading by the hand A little child, had halted by the well And tell the tired boy of that bright land When lo! the Lord, who many mansions had, Drew near and looked upon the suffering twain, Then pitying, spake, "Give me the little lad; In strength renewed, and glorious beauty clad, I'll bring him with me when I come again." Did she make answer selfishly and wrong. 66 Nay, but the woes I feel he too must share!" To struggle on, since he was freed from care. We will do likewise. Death hath made no breach That greets us still, though mortal tongues be It bids us do the work that they laid down- strain; So journeying till we reach the heavenly town, MESSRS. ROUTLEDGE reprint The Works of Laurence Sterne in an octavo of between six and seven hundred pages. If purchasers are found for these volumes, and from the rapidity with which they appear it seems certain that they are found, the English classic authors must be finding a larger public now than they did in their own day. Spectator. |